ABSTRACT
This chapter is devoted to a theory, not a case study, of socialism. It is therefore all the more desirable to begin with a clear idea or concept of socialism, but such a thing is not readily available. Most authors are content merely to refer to that “familiar notion” of socialism with many shades of meaning and diverse implications, without bothering to specify in which particular sense or senses their use of the term ought to be interpreted. Capitalism is a synthetic concept in the sense that it cannot be defined, as in dictionaries, with formal-descriptive statements. If Marx, rejecting the fantasies of the utopians, left first outline of the dialectic of capital in his monumental economic work, surely his followers should have carried on with the work of completing and polishing it. The difficulty of criticizing capitalism in economic terms, i.e., by using language of capital itself, has led many Marxists to abandon economics in favor of historical materialism.
